Elon Musk isn't just leading the billionaire pack—he's lapping the field. For the second straight year, Musk sits atop Forbes' World's Billionaires list, this time with an estimated net worth of $839 billion, the highest figure the magazine has ever recorded. Forbes credits a roughly $500 billion jump in his fortune to soaring valuations for Tesla and SpaceX, which is targeting a 2026 IPO. Musk is also the first person Forbes has ever pegged above $800 billion, edging closer to what would be an unprecedented trillion-dollar personal fortune.
He's the standout name in what Forbes calls a historic boom at the very top. The 40th edition of the list counts 3,428 billionaires worldwide, up by 400 from last year and the most since the ranking began in 1987. Their combined wealth hit $20.1 trillion, up from $16.1 trillion a year ago, as what a Forbes editor described as an AI-fueled market rally added "more than one billionaire per day" over the past 12 months. Twenty people now claim fortunes of at least $100 billion—not one single person had that much wealth as recently as 2017—collectively holding nearly 20% of all billionaire wealth.
The rest of the top tier trails Musk by a wide margin. Google co-founder Larry Page is No. 2 at $257 billion, followed by fellow co-founder Sergey Brin at $237 billion. Jeff Bezos lands in fourth with $224 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg rounds out the top five at $222 billion. The United States remains the global capital of extreme wealth, with a record 989 billionaires worth a combined $8.4 trillion, ahead of mainland China (539) and India (229). Forbes notes President Trump saw his ranking on the list jump from No. 700 to No. 645, thanks mostly to his dealings in cryptocurrency. His fortune jumped $1.4 billion over the past year to $6.5 billion.
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